The following is based on an instant messenger chat I had with Ben Walden, a big Alaskan soccer player who works in Engineering programming the interface and buttons for our instruments at Decagon Devices, Inc. in Pullman, Washington.

I could kick a ball a quarter mile back in 1983.  I think it was a Mitre size 4.   Still my favourite ball of all time. My father recently found it – old, tattered, and faded – under the deck behind the house.

All I could do was hold it in my hands and remember back to when my youth soccer team used to joke with me and say “hey, Kevin, just tap it.”

I don’t remember where it started, but that became their way of telling me to boot it all the way down the field.

I had a strong right leg back then, owing to my blue collar work as a morning paper boy with the Tri-City Herald. Wednesdays and Sundays were the heavy days, and my quadriceps and calves grew as a result of hauling those paper bags up some of the steeper driveways on Wright Street in Richland, Washington.

By my second season, my coach only wanted one thing from me: “Stay behind the forwards, and if you get the ball anywhere inside the halfway line, shoot!”

My playing style is still largely the same now as it was then.